Mas de Libian VDF 'Vin de Petanque' 2022
Regular price $40.00
Unit price per
- TASTING NOTE: Put simply, this is a wildly perfumed, succulent, juicy and irresistibly delicious high-country Rhône—purity and vibrancy are the name of the game. It opens with a tempting perfume of wild berries, thyme and soft violet before the palate rocks off the bat with silky red and purple fruit, lovely texture and refreshing powdery tannins. It closes pure and vibrant with a mineral-enriched finale. Another vivacious Vin de Pétanque (is there any other?) and born to go with anything off a smoking grill.
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ABOUT THE WINE: Biodynamic. Sourced from an assortment of different terroirs—clay/limestone, galets roulés and sandy parcels—Mas de Libian’s consistently delicious vin de soif is based on high-grown Grenache (75%) with roughly equal amounts of Mourvèdre and Syrah (all de-stemmed). There is also a little fruit from the estate’s decade-old plantings of two southern Rhône natives, Counoise and Vaccarèse. This year Hélène Thibon told us the blend also includes a splash of Couston (the natural offspring of Grenache and Aubun Noir).
Pétanque refers to the popular Provençal game of boules, and this wine is correspondingly built for splashing around with friends in casual settings. There was a short five-day maceration and the wine was raised exclusively in concrete tanks. It was bottled unfiltered, with only a smidge of sulphur employed.
- ABOUT THE PRODUCER: Although this free-spirited Ardèche grower can trace its roots as far back as 1670, the Domaine as we know it began to make a name for its wines somewhat more recently. Under the name Caves des Deux Jean-Pierre, Mas de Libian took root when Jean-Pierre Thibon took over management of the farm from his parents and built the original winemaking cellar in 1970. Some years later, in 1995, Jean-Pierre was joined by his daughter Hélène Thibon and her husband Alain Macagno, creating the ‘Mas de Libian’. A decade later, Catherine Thibon, Hélène’s sister, began work in the vineyards and today Hélène (who acts as the face of the Domaine), Catherine, and Alain are joined by the newest generation, Hélène’s son Aurélien. Together the family tends twenty-five hectares of mature vines (and 8 hectares of “nourishing” land planted with olive trees, grains, hay, a vegetable garden and flower garden, as well as a few beehives). The model at Mas de Libian is the farm as a self-sustaining environment instead of a production unit. It’s an idea that resonates through the wines, which ooze all the natural wealth and charm of this great region. The vines are cultivated and hand-harvested, the soils hoed by hand in the spring and Catherine Thibon ploughs roughly one-third of the vineyards’ clay-limestone terroir with the help of Nestor and Bambi, the estates two Franche-Comté workhorses. Hélène takes little credit for her farms’ organic management, which she says has been practiced here for generations. A continuation of this philosophy, and an important milestone for the Domaine, was becoming certified biodynamic (Demeter) in 2005. No chemicals are used and even in generous vintages, very low yields are the norm. The wines are crafted in unlined concrete vats with—cuvée depending—a portion of each wine being aged in large old foudres or older demi-muids. There are no yeast additions here, and sulphur additions are kept to the barest minimum. Often the wines are raised without the addition of any sulphur at all save for a few milligrams at bottling. We should note that the gentle handling, precise winemaking and strict hygiene in the cellars render Mas de Libian’s wines amongst the most stable low sulphur wines we know of. The wines are never fined or filtered.
- COUNTRY: France
- REGION: Southern Rhone
- VARIETAL: Grenache 75%, Syrah, Mourvedre, Counoise, Vaccarese, Couston
- WINE STYLE: Red Wine
- WINEMAKER: Hélène Thibon
- CLASSIFICATION: Minimal Intervention, Unfined & Unfiltered, Minimal Sulphites, Biodynamic Farming, Vegan
- CLOSURE: Cork
- ABV%: 14%
- SIZE: 750ml
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